ASL Video Highlights Tour

Welcome to the Penn Museum! CJ Jones is going to take you on a tour of the highlights of the galleries tour in American Sign Language. In this introduction, CJ explains exactly what archaeology and anthropology is before opening the door to explore the galleries.

Head of a Colossal Statue of Ramses II, Abydos, Dynasty 19, Reign of Ramses II (1290-1224 BCE), Limestone (restored), Penn Museum Object 69-29-1. Depicted here is the bust one of a series of colossal figures that originally decorated the front of a row of rectangular pillars in the courtyard of a small temple at Abydos. The king is depicted mummiform in the style of the god Osiris. The king holds the symbols of kingship, the crook and flail, in his now missing hands. Since the figure was intended to tower over any human below, the eyes look down. Much of the original color remains.

This door socket is from Hierakonpolis in southern Egypt, an important place because its rulers became some of the first pharaohs around 3000 BCE. This door socket would have been part of a long row of bound enemies who formed a door threshold.

This popular Museum exhibition features human and animal mummies, tomb artifacts, and objects and materials used in the mummification process. It offers an in-depth look at the ancient Egyptian beliefs in the afterlife, and the complex funerary practices they developed over thousands of years. The exhibition also looks at what modern-day scientists, through x-ray, autopsy and other techniques, have learned about ancient Egyptian culture.

This is an example of a mummy of a young boy from the Roman period in Egypt about 2,000 years ago. We are uncertain how he died. A current project here at the Penn Museum involves the CAT-scanning of all of our mummies at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in order to retrieve information without having to unwrap the body.

The Chinese Rotunda is the majestic setting of the Museum's Chinese collection. Ninety feet in diameter and soaring ninety feet high, the rotunda is one of the largest unsupported masonry domes in the United States, housing one of the finest collections of monumental Chinese art in the country.

In 1922—the same year that Howard Carter shocked the world with his discovery of Tutankhamen's tomb in Egypt—a little-known British archaeologist, Charles Leonard Woolley, began excavations near the town of Nasiriyah at the site of Ur—one of ancient Mesopotamia's most important cities. His most remarkable discovery was a massive cemetery with thousands of burials, including a small number of rich tombs belonging to the kings and queens of Ur from around 2500 BCE. The Royal Cemetery of Ur and its spectacular finds still fascinate and challenge us today. In this exhibition, you will encounter one of the top ten archaeological discoveries of all time and explore early Mesopotamia through the lens of research carried out in the decades following Woolley's incredible discovery.

This goat standing upright against a flowering plant and its counterpart in the British Museum are two of the most famous objects from the Royal Cemetery of Ur. They have frequently been referred to as the Ram Caught in a Thicket because the biblical image (Gen. 22:13) so aptly fits the sculptures. Ram Caught in a Thicket, Gold, silver, lapis lazuli, copper, shell, red limestone, and bitumen, H. 42.6 cm. Penn Museum Object 30-12-702.

The Penn Museum holds nearly 25,000 artifacts from excavations in the Levant, a geographical area that encompasses modern Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, Jordan and Lebanon, as well as adjacent parts of Syria. Penn Museum's holdings represent the largest collection of artifacts from the region in the United States and the Western Hemisphere.

At Beth Shean, fragments of fifty clay sarcophagi were found in reused Early Bronze Age tombs. These sarcophagi date from the last phase of the Egyptian empire in Canaan (ca. 1250-1150 BCE). The lids of these sarcophagi depict faces and upper torsos.

The Romans traced their mythical beginnings to the Trojan War and to Romulus, who supposedly founded the city of Rome in 753 BCE. It was the genius of the Romans to transform Greek ideals and the ways of their Etruscan forerunners into their own civilized and highly organized way of life. During the 4th and 3rd centuries BCE they absorbed many parts of Italy, including the Etruscan homeland. In the 3rd and 2nd century BCE they captured the Carthaginian controlled areas of North Africa, Sardinia, western Sicily and Spain, the Greek colonies of southern Italy and Sicily, the Greek homeland and the Hellenistic kingdoms. Under the reign of Trajan (98-117 CE), the Roman Empire reached its greatest extent. Roman norms embraced the empire, incorporating peoples of various races, language groups, and cultural backgrounds.

Dominating the new Roman World gallery is an internationally famous military relief, once part of a commemorative arch for the emperor Trajan, erected in 102 CE at ancient Puteoli near Naples. This monumental sculpture is also a prime example of Roman politics combined with Roman practicality -- the opposite side of the marble block contains an earlier inscription honoring the emperor Domitian. Visitors can see how the inscription was painstakingly, but incompletely, chiseled off after Domitian's assassination and official disgrace by the Roman Senate in 96 CE.

The centerpiece of the Rome Gallery is a 4 ft. x 2 ft. model of a Roman house of the type excavated at Pompeii and Herculaneum. Visitors can learn about Vitruvius, a famous Roman architect, and his variations in housing design.

The Etruscans dominated the central part of the Italic peninsula during the late 8th through the 6th centuries BCE. Their economy depended largely on trade, and their commercial contacts favored the Greek colonies in Southern Italy and Sicily. They imported Greek pottery in great quantity, and, in fact, much of the Greek pottery preserved to us from antiquity was found in Etruscan tombs. Etruscans were influential in transforming Rome into an urban center in the 6th century BCE and Roman tradition identifies a family of Etruscans, the Tarquins, as the last dynastic rulers of Rome. Although their civilization was eventually eclipsed by Roman rule, their legacy lived on in Roman customs and culture.

The Greeks were the pre-eminent merchants of the Mediterranean world. Even in the Bronze Age their commercial contacts reached to Egypt and the Near East. During the height of Greek civilization their city-states dominated the economy of the entire Mediterranean region. The Greeks were also energetic colonizers. From as early as the 8th century BCE Greek emigrants founded new settlements in Italy, North Africa, southern France, Asia Minor, and the Black Sea region. Alexander the Great (d. 323 BCE) conquered the east as far as India. His successors brought about an unparalleled expansion of Greek civilization in which Greek language and culture became the koine, the most common and acceptable way of life.

One of the most important objects in the gallery is the large amphora of c. 540-530 BCE decorated with scenes from the Trojan War. Found in a tomb in Orvieto, Italy, it was painted by the well-known Athenian artist Exekias.